“Total explicitness is impossible. The effort of formal logic to make thought entirely explicit, while an admirable and in many ways indispensable and fantastically productive effort, is ultimately doomed to failure and entails deep psychological strain because of its unreality. Thought can only be made more and more explicit, never totally so.”
More from Walter Ong
“Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit… Though words are…”
“It is perfectly true that neither you nor I can hope to set up a program for activity…”
“The articulate remains always embedded in the inarticulate.”
“Science itself is always incomplete articulation.”